Organization

Conductor

Georges Prêtre

Stage director

Franco Zeffirelli

Set designer

Gianni Quaranta

Singer

Soprano

Teresa Stratas

Nedda

Tenor

Plácido Domingo

Canio

Baritone

Alberto Rinaldi

Silvio

Juan Pons

Tonio

Teatro alla Scala

Italian

Pagliacci

Milan

Italy

The career of the Italian theatre, film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, born February 12, 1923 in Florence, spans more than half a century. When he saw Lawrence Olivier in the film "Henry V" in the late 1940s, he gave up his architecture studies and turned to the theater. He began as an actor in various theatrical productions by Luchino Visconti. He later worked as Visconti's assistant and began his career as a set designer and director in the 1950s. In 1965 his first film was released: Puccini's "La Bohème" under the musical direction of Herbert von Karajan. It is based on Zeffirelli's Milan production of 1963 and is still considered a classic of opera films. Zeffirelli became known far beyond the field of opera with his Shakespeare film adaptations "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) and "Romeo and Juliet", for which he was nominated for an Oscar as best director in 1969. To this day he is a successful director and set designer in the world of film, opera and drama.

Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci" (1892) belongs to the genre of verismo, an operatic style that originated in Italy at the end of the 19th century and favors naturalness on stage and dramatic material taken from everyday life.
The plot: A comedy troupe makes guest appearances in an Italian village. Their leader Canio jealously watches his young wife Nedda, who is having an affair with the farmer Silvio. When the same situation is played out on stage in the evening, reality breaks into the game brutally: Canio draws the knife and attacks Nedda and Silvio...
Leoncavallo came up with the idea for this opera when he read the story on the scandalous page of his newspaper about a man who, as an actor in a southern Italian theater company, stabbed his wife to death during the performance - just as the play intended.
"It's about the everyday theater of life," explains Franco Zeffirelli, "everyone plays their part in it. You're acting. You're joking and playing pranks. You're hungry, but you can still laugh. You love each other - and kill each other." Zeffirelli filmed "Pagliacci" at La Scala in Milan and in the studio. "For me, it won't be a film adaptation of an opera like we're used to from the past," promised Franco Zeffirelli before filming began. His film adaptation of "I Pagliacci" won the 1985 Emmy Award for Best Director in the Classical Music Program category.

Pagliacci Leoncavallo

Public

German

Approved

Production booklet

Further reading